Hairpins
by MissLudenberg
Summary: From that moment on, it was decided. Mami would never be alone again. Mami would have a friend, a companion that would always fight alongside her. Never again would she hate herself. Never again would she cry alone.


**i wrote this ages ago to torment a mami-loving friend and it worked deliciously ohoo despair is such a wonderful feeling**

Hairpins

The blond's posture stiffened as she loosened her hand from the girl's friendly grasp. They stopped in their tracks, the elder not finding the strength to place another step.

"…I'm not a role model, you know. I'm nothing to be looked up to," Mami admitted quietly, the heavy dullness in her chest causing her to be almost short of breath. "When I'm sad and all by myself, I have no one to go to. All I can do is cry alone..."

Mami herself had a tough time accepting these words; however so much she was aware they were true. They always had been after all, she was always alone. And whenever there came someone who she found comfort in, that someone had always left her in the end.

_"Are you ready to go, Mami?" Sawada Tomoe asked his young daughter, checking around for his car keys as he also fumbled for his coat on the hanger._

_Mami's ears perked up and she nodded happily, almost bouncing on the spot with excitement. She grinned from ear to ear. "Of course! I really can't wait, papa; I haven't been to the aquarium since I was little!"_

_Rina Tomoe smoothed back her dirty blond hair with one hand. She gazed at Mami fondly with kind, similar, golden eyes as she returned the smile that her daughter brightened the hallway with. "You'll see all the pretty fishes there! Which one's your favourite?"_

_"Hmm…" Mami's eyes cast skyward as she wondered, her bottom lip up in a thinking pout. "Ooh, the angelfish of course… they are so beautiful, and they have a beautiful name too!"_

_Rina nodded in agreement while Sawada finally found the keys and swiped them off from the wooden table. "Sounds about right."_

_Mami beamed in delight. Today was a very special day for her as she and her parents were spending a day together out to the aquarium, a place where she loved to visit as a small child. As both of her parents worked long hours, the family as a whole hardly spent time together, so any day when they could was going to definitely be remembered by the young blond. This was going to be a precious day, Mami was sure of it. She loved her parents so very much. They even counted as her best friends to her!_

_"Let's go, you two!" Sawada announced, pushing down the handle and opening the door to expose the interior of their home to the outdoors._

_"Okay, papa!" Mami obeyed, taking a skip forward before a hand pulled her back. She turned her head curiously. "Mama?"_

_Rina smiled gently and retrieved her hand from her daughter's shoulder. "I just remembered that I bought something for you in the store yesterday to wear today, let me just go and get it."_

_There was no rush to leave, after all. So Sawada and Mami waited patiently for the latter's mother, exchanging a murmur of small talk during. Not too long later, Rina reappeared through the doorway with a curled up left hand indicating containment of a small object. She pulled Mami's open hand out in front of her, and poured the item onto the child's soft palm. Mami glanced down to admire it._

_"Ooh, what is this?" She exclaimed in fascination, holding it up and twirling it around, watching as the light caught on to the gold and subsequently shone about the room. _

_"It's a hairpin," Rina told her, outlining the flower shape with her fingertips. She flexed her hand fully to reveal that another one had been tucked away under her fingers. "They come in a pair. Your father and I thought they would look lovely on you to wear out today!"_

_Mami's eyes widened. "These pretty things…are for me? To keep?"_

_"Of course they're to keep, silly," Sawada chuckled. "Take care of them, won't you? They're a very special present that's made from real gold!"_

_"Real gold?" Mami gasped in surprise. "That must have cost Mama and Papa so much money, just to spend on a present for me!"_

_Rina laughed lightly and winked. "Money doesn't matter when it's you, Mami. Mama and Papa love you enough to do anything for you, and looking pretty is a girl's number-one priority!" With that, she took each hair pin back and slotted them in the empty space between Mami's head and her curls, where they seemed to fit perfectly. "Doesn't our Mami-chan look so beautiful now?"_

_"She has always looked beautiful," Sawada nodded genuinely before gesturing to the open door. "Now, shall we get going? If we wait any longer, the aquarium's going to close without us!"_

_"Oh dear! Come on Mami, let's get to the car now!" Rina took her daughter by the hand and rushed with her husband out of the doorway._

_However, the rushing was cut short yet again by the young girl this time as she peered up to her parents, a hint of disappointment about her features. "I still haven't seen what my new hairpins look like on me! Can I go to the mirror please?"_

_"We have to get going now Mami, but there must be a mirror somewhere there at the aquarium so I promise we can look at that first before any of the fish" Sawada mentioned, beckoning his daughter out of the door frame so that he could lock the front door shut behind them. _

_Mami soon accepted this and her happy, guileless demeanour returned once more. "Oh, okay! Thank you for the hairpins by the way! I'll tell you how much I like them once I see them in the aquarium mirror; I'm so excited to see how they look on me!"_

_After a smile exchanged by the whole family, the three of them headed towards the car for a family day out that they would treasure for as long as they could remember. _

**_...It happened faster than anyone could have ever imagined._**

**_A screeching of tyres._**

**_A blinding flash of light._**

**_The suffocating stench of smoke._**

**_Coughing. _**

_"Mama…Papa…"_

**_Blood._**

_*Tomoe Mami, you seem to be fatally wounded!*_

**_Screaming._**

_*If you accept the contract and become a magical girl, then I can help you!*_

**_Hysteria._**

_Blood seeped from the corners of her mouth, her broken ribs protruding from her chest. She croaked helplessly for her parents. It hurt to cry. It hurt to breathe._

**_Tears._**

_*So, what do you wish for?*_

**_Loss._**

_"…"_

**_Pain._**

_"…Save…me…"_

**_…Loneliness. _**

_The girl stood by herself in the empty aquarium, clean and unchanged. She looked healthy, she looked perky. Her face adorned a natural glow and her lips appeared plump and red. If the hall weren't laden with shadows, she might have even been radiating with beauty. _

_She stared into the mirror before her with empty, lifeless eyes. _

_A hand raised itself up to one object slotted neatly into her hair. Her numb fingertips closed around the coldness of the gold as her eyes began to well and sting with the presence of tears._

_Mami let them freely stream down her cheeks. She bit her lip so deep until the redness burst with blood, ruining her perfect new appearance. Wailing and sobbing as loud as she could whilst maintaining her locked stare into the looking glass, she let her bloodshot eyes travel to the hairpins in her blond locks and gripped them tightly around the gaps in the flowery frame._

_"M..mama…Papa…" She snivelled, choking on her own tears."They…they look really great on me…I love them…!"_

_Mami couldn't take it anymore. She fell to her knees and broke down in a fit of shrieks and coughs. Why…why did this have to happen to her? All she wanted was a day out with her parents. All she wanted was to spend a happy, fun time with them at the aquarium and have a delicious lunch with them. All she wanted was for them all to take pictures together, and to later put them in a picture folder that they could look back on in the future. All she wanted was them…_

_Her best friends…the two people she loved most in the world…ripped away from her at the speed of light. That was the worst pain._

_…No… Mami clutched at her hairpins, her last gifts from them, again, and ran her thumb over the orange luminous orb that replaced one of the barren circles in the centre of the flower. No…_

_…The worst pain was that she could have done something about it. Mami Tomoe hated herself for that._

_And Mami Tomoe would always be alone, because of that._

"…But you're not alone anymore, Mami-San!"

A cheerful, reassuring voice snapped Mami out of her depressing thoughts as she turned to face Madoka behind her, who wore a gentle smile reminiscent to that one of her mother's.

"So that means…I don't have to be alone anymore? You'll always stay with me, right?" Mami asked hopefully, building momentum in her cracked voice.

Madoka nodded for definite and Mami felt her chest burn with a loving warmth.

From that moment on, it was decided. Mami would never be alone again. Mami would have a friend, a companion that would always fight alongside her. Never again would she hate herself. Never again would she cry alone.

**I feel so light…this is the first time I've felt this great whilst fighting! I'm not afraid of anything anymore!**

Mami Tomoe…was happy again.

And nothing would take this happiness away from her this time!

**_CRUNCH._**

_A splatter and ooze of blood as the sound of a head detaching from its body sliced clearly through the air as if it were a butterknife. Sayaka and Madoka cringed in absolute horror as a loud thud, a spurt of liquid and a crashing of bones signalled the body's collision with the witch lair's floor. Charlotte bathed in the bloodbath, mutilating the headless corpse with her dagger-like teeth as she revelled in the taste of the sweet 'cheesecake'._

_"Take heed," Homura warned coldly after the witch was destroyed by her, a feat which Mami failed to achieve. She gestured over her shoulder towards the pool of blood and the grisly stain of organs, now slightly dry, behind her. "…This is what it truly means to be a magical girl."_

**_"With kindness comes naïveté. Courage becomes foolhardiness. Furthermore, dedication has no reward. If you can't accept any of that, you are not fit to be a magical girl."_**


End file.
